A Very Good Piece
By Ray McGovern
"Stop! Please. Get beneath the hype over former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. Don't miss the forest for the trees.
Not since John Dean told the truth about President Richard Nixon's crimes have we had an account by a very close aide to a sitting president charging him with crimes of the most serious kind.
McClellan writes that George W. Bush abandoned "candor and honesty" to wage a "political campaign" that led the nation into an "unnecessary war."
The chief U.S. prosecutor of senior Nazi officials at the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, labeled such action – more correctly termed a war of aggression – the "supreme international crime."......
Water over the dam, you say? No way.
White House spinners are at it again – "fixing" the intelligence around the policy, this time on Iran. The fixing is obvious, but don't expect to hear about it from the FCM......
The worst-kept secret in Washington is that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are looking for a pretext to order air and missile attacks on Iran. But when and how will Dana Perino and the rest of the propaganda machine market this one?
When to sell? If former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card's dictum regarding "marketing" the war on Iraq holds sway – i.e., "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August" – the administration has only two months, unless it opts for an "October Surprise" as a more effective way to help achieve a Republican victory in November......
A Flexible Director of National Intelligence
Malleable Mike McConnell showed his true colors shortly after the president got back from Israel.
Unable to withstand withering criticism from the likes of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, and the irrepressible former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, McConnell backpedaled.
In testimony to the Senate on Feb. 5 he confessed to careless wording in the NIE due to time constraints, and even indicated he "probably would have changed a thing or two."......
The NY Times Jumps In
And on May 27, the New York Times misquoted one of the key judgments of the NIE. More than a subtle distinction, the Times indicated that the Estimate stated, "It was uncertain whether the weapons work had resumed."
Speaking to the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) two days later, McConnell's deputy, Donald Kerr, took the same line, emphasizing that "since the halted activities were part of an unannounced secret program Iran attempted to hide, we do not know if it has been restarted." (Emphasis in original).....
Asked by Siegel to explain why the Israelis have suggested a much shorter timeline for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, Negroponte stated the obvious with bluntness uncommon for a diplomat: "I think that sometimes what the Israelis will do [is] give you the worst-case assessment."
Really!"
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